‘The Craft’ Could Have Starred Alicia Silverstone, Scarlett Johansson, or Even Angelina Jolie!

‘The Craft’ Could Have Starred Alicia Silverstone, Scarlett Johansson, or Even Angelina Jolie!

EW just published a lengthy oral history of the making of Andrew Fleming‘s classic 1996 The Craft that has all sorts of juicy nuggets of info. While we’ll always remember Fairuza Balk, Robin Tunney, Neve Campbell, and Rachel True as the quartet of teen witches, there were some huge names in contention.

Yes, the “Party of Five” star gave Silverstone, Johansson, and Jolie a run for their money, but it’s damned interesting to try and imagine the film with any of those future stars in an early witch-y role.

Hackers D: Angelina Jolie, Jonny Lee Miller R: Iain Softley

Fleming also revealed that he had penned a “Craft” pilot for Fox. The story takes an interesting turn:

“I wrote a pilot of ‘The Craft’ for Fox,” said Fleming. “The WB wanted to take it and Fox wouldn’t let it go. And then the next year, ‘Charmed’ came out.”

Tunney added: “‘Charmed’ is a rip-off of ‘The Craft’. It was completely obvious to the point that people would think I was on ‘Charmed’ for years after.”

Another bombshell was writer Peter Filardi‘s reveal that the studio regretted the “R”-rating. “I wasn’t surprised that the film found an audience, but the studio was. They called me in weeks later and said, ‘We underestimated this film. If we had known we might have marketed it differently.’ It should have never been rated R.”

Added Flemming: “[The rating] was a surprise because we actually sent the script to the MPAA for rating in advance, and we had held off on any really hard language or nudity or graphic violence because we wanted a PG-13. They said, ‘This is an R.’ When we asked why, they said, ‘Because it’s about devil worship and teens and we don’t want to encourage that.’ I told them Paganism is not devil worship; it’s actually a line in the movie.”

Producer Douglas Wick has a different take: “[The rating] was all about teen suicide. There was an idea that if you never talked about it, teens wouldn’t think about it. That’s where we got punished for a certain level of reality.”